[DATAGOV Core] Fwd: Re: DATAGOV <> Soizic (Portugal encounter)

[Giulia Campaioli]

Hi team!

Scroll to the bottom of this email exchange to find the email from Soizic, the French independent researcher who Stefi and I met at the 2026 Global Gathering in Estoril. I think it would be nice to invite her at some point for a lab activity or a speaker's series event. Her work focuses on France and a bit of EU in general, so maybe more interesting for Matteo and Sruthi?

Anyway, hope you'll find it interesting.
Best,
Giulia


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:        Re: DATAGOV <> Soizic (Portugal encounter)
Date:   Thu, 8 Oct 2026 17:40:19 -0300
From:   soizic.penicaud at gmail.com<mailto:soizic.penicaud at gmail.com>
To:     Giulia Campaioli <g.campaioli at uva.nl><mailto:g.campaioli at uva.nl>
CC:     Stefania Milan <S.Milan at uva.nl><mailto:S.Milan at uva.nl>


Dear Giulia,

Thank you for your response!! I’m so honored you’d appreciate my work. And yes absolutely, do share this email with anyone interested.

I’d love to think about doing something together in 2027. Let’s touch base then and in the meantime let me know where I can best follow your work -I’m super excited to learn from you :)

Best,
Soizic

On 8 Oct 2026, at 11:13, Giulia Campaioli <g.campaioli at uva.nl><mailto:g.campaioli at uva.nl> wrote:


Dear Soizic,

Thanks so much for your email, and sorry for not responding earlier! It was so lovely to meet you in Estoril too, and thank you for taking the time to share all of this.

I am really impressed by your work, especially the combination of investigative reporting, activism, teaching and policy work!

I think it would be really cool to collab on a workshop for the DATAGOV Living Lab, once we have the infrastructure and agenda ready. We are finalizing the setup and I think that from January we will start to schedule events like workshop, talks, participatory installations, etc. We may be starting a speakers' series at some point, but we are not there yet, so we are also open to hearing ideas :)

Can I share this email with the rest of the team? the PhDs and the other postdoc are curious to know more about your work too. Then we can all think about something we could organize together.

Best,
Giulia

On 01/10/2026 13:48, Soizic Penicaud wrote:
Dear both,
Following Stefania's ooo instructions and resending this email after September 28 :)
Warmly,
Soizic

Le ven. 25 sept. 2026 à 11:57, Soizic Penicaud <soizic.penicaud at gmail.com<mailto:soizic.penicaud at gmail.com>> a écrit :
Dear Giulia, dear Stefania,

It was so nice to meet you in Estoril!

As discussed, here's more information about my own work.
I'm an independent qualitative researcher and AI policy specialist, and I work with civil society organizations, journalists and sometimes regulators/public institutions to investigate the harms of AI-driven technologies in the public sector and hold Big Tech & governments accountable. My main sectoral areas of focus is social protection/welfare, and I'm exploring the migration space right now (not necessarily border control but technologies to support migration processes).

  *   As a reporter with Lighthouse Reports, I contributed to the reporting on the risk-scoring algorithm used by CNAF<https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/frances-digital-inquisition/>, the French social protection agency, then published in Le Monde;
  *   I'm still involved in the topic via economic justice organizations I am an activist with. We recently published a website<https://droitsnumeriques.fr/> to help people grapple better with their rights in the automated government sphere. It's so so much text (even the games we made have text!) and I'm inspired by your much more artistic & visual methods, Giulia. Our goal is to run workshops with social workers and local collectives to improve the resources and make sure they're used.
  *   With Lighthouse, I'm also working on this case in Bristol<https://thebristolcable.org/2026/06/bristol-data-tools-risked-wrongly-flagging-victims-and-suspects-childrens-commissioner-deeply-concerned/>, supporting a local investigative outlet called the Bristol Cable;
  *   I'm also the cofounder of the volunteer-led Observatory of public sector algorithms<https://odap.fr/en> -we maintain a database of as many known public sector algorithms in France as we can. We then work with unions, activists and others to make the topic more accessible.
  *   I also do policy work on "AI governance", with local governments in France<https://www.interconnectes.com/documents/fbedc9ee-6270-f111-ac9a-000d3a39bd37/gouvernance-de-l-ia-responsable-guide-des-bonnes-pratiques-des-collectivites-pour-se-lancer>, the Council of Europe<https://rm.coe.int/policy-guidelines-eng-web/48802a38a5%20>, IA Ciudadana<https://iaciudadana.org/2025/03/13/making-algorithm-registers-work-for-meaningful-transparency/>.
  *   I'm also a teacher at Sciences Po's Graduate School of Public Affairs. I've designed and taught a course about Accountable Uses of AI in the Public Sector<http://soizicpenicaud.com/casestudy-syllabus/> for the last six years, that's based on post-mortem analyses of algorithm scandals. This year, I'm starting another course where we're partnering with a French government agency to study an algorithm they're developing for work inspections.

Things I'm thinking about at the moment:

  *   I've been thinking a lot about public sector algorithms as infrastructure -see the talk I gave in a hearing for the French National Assembly<https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/comptes-rendus/cenum/l17cenum2526005_compte-rendu>.
  *   Recently, I've been looking more and more at the military sector, because I've investigated French generative AI company Mistral AI<https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/economie-et-social/221225/comment-un-cofondateur-de-mistral-ai-pirate-des-millions-de-livres-quand-il-travaillait-chez-m> who is definitely a "dual use" technology company. I'm also struck by the discourse around sovereignty and the need to push back against a "European Palantir" as the solution to all our troubles.
  *   I'm also thinking about how generative AI reconfigures how governments think about AI accountability, and how generative AI opens yet again the doors to private actors in government.

That's... a lot hahah! Hopefully you find some things that interest you.
I'd love to keep talking and possibly come visit you, learn more about your work and think up joint projects together.

Warmly,
A presto, spero,
Soizic

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